Teleconference meetings through the use of a telephone and a computing device are common today. In a known audio/visual teleconference meeting, a host of the meeting posts documents in a meeting notice, generated at a host's server computer, and allows the invitees to download the documents to their computer and page through the documents at will. A known Lotus™ Notes program can be used to schedule an audio/visual teleconference meetings, identify the call-in telephone number, designate and notify the invitees and post the documents. In response to the scheduling of the meeting, the Lotus™ Notes program sends meeting notices to the invitees, activates the call-in telephone number, and makes the posted documents available for download to the invitees. The invitees open the meeting notice and “click-on” an icon for the posted documents. These documents provide pertinent information to the invitees as well as allow the invitees to follow along with the presentation during the conference call. At the date and time scheduled for the meeting, each invitee calls-in to a shared telephone number through a telephone for oral communication, and can access and view the posted documents via the invitee's computing device by “clicking-on” icons for the posted documents displayed in the meeting notice. Upon such selection of the icons for the posted documents, the host's server downloads the selected documents to the invitee's computer via a network determined by the host's server. During a typical teleconference, the host typically presents orally the material displayed in the posted documents and orally notifies the invitees as to which document and page(s) to view, but invitees controls what documents and pages of the document to view on the screens of their computing devices.
The computing devices can be mobile or stationary, and the telephone and computing device can be integrated together. The telephone can be a conventional “plain old telephone system (“POTS”) or a Voice over Internet Protocol system. Examples of known mobile computers are smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and computer tablets, where some of these devices include integrated telephone capability. Examples of known stationary computing devices are desk top computers and other workstations.
It was known for the telephone call of the teleconference to occur through a Voice over Internet Protocol network. In some instances the same communications network provides connectivity for the transfer of both the telephone conference call and the sending and receiving of data related to the presentation materials. However, in other instances, the teleconferencing sessions occur through different networks. In the situation where multiple networks are used, typically the audio portion of the session is carried by a separate network than the network that supports the delivery of the documents related to the teleconference.
During known teleconferences, a problem occasionally occurs where the invitee calls-in to the teleconference call, via a telephone, but cannot access the posted documents by “clicking-on” the documents' icons for the posted documents due to failure of the designated network used to send the documents to the computing device of the invitee.
An object of the present invention is to provide the documents to an invitee of a teleconference when the invitee can call-in to the teleconference call, but cannot access the documents by clicking on the icons for the posted documents.